Now Face to Face (65 page)

“Fit, as far as I know. The Duke went to fetch her to take her to Lindenmas so that she would be safe.”

“Tell me about the invasion.”

But the housekeeper could tell her little more than that the Duke of Ormonde was to come. That the great Bishop of Rochester himself was said to be the head of it all—caught, so the rumor in broadsheets was, by word of a little spotted dog sent him by the Pretender himself.

Rochester had been a friend of Roger’s.

“Has the Bishop of Rochester been arrested?”

“No, ma’am.”

Barbara went to a long window and looked out at the gardens. Trees hid the streets beyond, cushioned the house from the busy sprawl all around. One might have been a mile from town, in the country, and yet just beyond the entrance gates was Pall Mall with St. James’s Palace, where the King lived, and Green Park at its end. I must call upon the King, the Prince and Princess of Wales, she was thinking, as she took Harry to walk in the gardens. I must get at the lay of the land here again. But does it matter, if there is to be war?

War.

Dread filled her.

Watching Harry run about, roll himself in the flower beds, bark at the weederwomen bent over, weeding, she thought, My brother always said, One day there will be an invasion and we will be in the thick of it, Bab. But by then, she no longer took what was said by Harry and the others in Italy seriously. The afternoon wine the men drank as they sat in Rome’s sunny plazas gave them bold words and bolder dreams, but on the morrow, there seemed to be only more wine and more words. She had soon grown bored with it.

The arbor under which she sat was heavy with roses, fat, pink-white, as petaled as cabbages, all the warmth of June in them. In another day or so, it would be July. The petals of a spent rose fell gently in her lap. Barbara stared at them, tore one to bits, thinking, Charles is a father. Tony is married; will, perhaps, soon be a father himself. Ormonde is coming. What else has happened in my absence?

“I
MUST
go and call on Mother and on my aunt Shrew,” she told Thérèse later. Both of them would know almost all there was to know.

She splashed in a wonderful bath that washed the weeks aboard ship from her. She stood still for a lovely gown to be put upon herself, for powder, rouge, a patch placed roguishly by her right eye. She stood still for feathers and Indian beading woven into her hair. She looked at herself in a long mirror. Feathers and fuss, wonderful, pleasing, fun, yet strange after the simplicity of First Curle.

She touched a patch on her face and thought of the slaves’ ritual scars, flicked at a feather and saw the Iroquois again in the Governor’s hall. We, with our patches and powder, are no different, she thought. We, too, must have our masks, our disguises, our ways to summon spirit and courage.

“Shall I come with you?” asked Thérèse.

“Not this time. The evening is yours, Thérèse. We are home. Never mind unpacking trunks yet, please yourself this evening.”

She had lied to Thérèse about where she was going.

“The Duke of Wharton’s house,” she told Tony’s coachman.

But no one was at home. Wharton had leased the house to someone else and was living in the village of Twickenham, she was told.

“Well, my lady?” said the coachman.

She hesitated, then said, “Devane Square.”

T
HE CHURCH
was one Thérèse had gone to, often, when she was in London. It was small, wedged between narrow houses, and there was no one in it, except for one man. The man was an agent for Walpole, and he was writing down descriptions of anyone who came to worship in this church.

But Thérèse couldn’t know that. She went at once to light a candle for Hyacinthe and another for Harry, Lord Alderley, and another for the baby that she had had taken from herself—long ago, now, it seemed. What comfort, she thought as the flames glowed in the soft dark; how I have missed this. There had been no church for her in Virginia. At once, a great peace came over her.

She went to a pew and knelt to pray.

Slane was looking out the slit of the curtain in the confessional. To the priest on the other side of the intricate wooden grille that separated them he said: “There is someone here, a woman. Walpole’s spy is watching her, scribbling away. Why doesn’t she know we are suspected, one and all? Do you know her, Father?” Something about her was familiar.

The priest left the confessional; when he came back, he said to Slane, “She used to come here some years ago. I do not know her name.”

Who is she? thought Slane. Where have I seen her?

“Warn her,” he said to the priest. “Tell her when she comes to give confession that she is being watched.”

B
ARBARA STOOD
still, taking in the sight before her. She’d never seen the final destruction of Devane House; she’d left before it was done. I was wise to do so, not to see this, she thought. Standing in the lane before the place where the house had been, she thought, I couldn’t have borne it.

Nothing was left but the fountain and the landscape pool, in which sunlight glimmered. In her mind was the magnificent house, its adjoining Temple of Arts, the acres of gardens, all of it the talk of London. Now, where the house had been, there was only this clear desolation, bits of broken brick, ground not yet healed; then, beyond, the gentle hills, shepherds herding in the sheep, and the spire of the church in Marylebone. The house might never have been.

To the west, someone was building, someone was dredging out streets. She tried to remember. The Oxford family, yes—she remembered Roger writing in his letters of their plans for a six-acre square called Cavendish Square, near his; of the two squares rising side by side, now that the Oxfords had married into the wealth of the Cavendish family. The Duke of Chandos, challenged by Devane House, had been planning a house as part of Cavendish Square, a house to rival Roger’s.

There was no house from Chandos yet, only what looked to be its outbuildings, kitchens or bakeries or stables. London had whispered, Look at Devane, he builds his house in the wilderness. He’s mad. Yet they flocked to see what he did. London will come to me, Roger had written. London does come to me.

A coach lumbered down Tyburn Road, and she turned to watch it. There was Hyde Park. She could see the tents of the King’s soldiers, so many tents. Roger had been King George’s man, knowing and serving the family before they came to the throne. It had been part of his triumph, to anticipate that it would be George who came to the throne, and to leave England and go to Hanover to serve him personally. Was this his reward? Was this how King George treated his friends? Or was it, as her grandmother would have said, that time and chance happen to all?

She stepped back into the carriage, thoughtful, the exultant shipboard mood completely gone now. The sight of the desolate square was unnerving. Can I do it? she thought. Am I mad to dream of rebuilding? She gave the coachman Aunt Shrew’s name.

The area around Whitehall, where her aunt lived, was more crowded than she remembered it being on summer’s eves in the past. There were soldiers everywhere.

Stepping out of the carriage, she had to stop a moment, because feeling was pushing up at her. Grief, real and deep grief at the destruction of Devane Square. Not now, she thought, not yet.

The servant said her aunt was home. Barbara ran up the stairs. There was Aunt Shrew rouged and powdered, five patches on her face, jewels at her ears and neck, an elaborate wig with ribbons in it, dressed as if for a court fête, and doing nothing more than playing cards in her own drawing room. In a flash that made her laugh, Barbara had a vision of Aunt Shrew, visiting Virginia. How would Bolling react to her? Or Perry?

Aunt Shrew stood up from her card table at the sight of Barbara, who ran forward to kiss her.

“Barbara, my dear. I cannot believe my eyes. You could knock me over with a feather. As if there isn’t enough excitement in London today. Oh, but I am delighted you are back. Give me a hug and a kiss as well. I cannot believe it. I forgot how gorgeous you are. Where is my mind? You’ve confounded me, Barbara, I don’t know up from down. This is Sir Alexander Pendarves. He is a particular friend of mine.”

Barbara smiled at Pendarves, snuff-stained, grimy; he had been one of her mother’s choices for her after Roger died. How could her mother have ever thought she would look at him, never mind marry him? Coins, Barbara, she could remember her mother saying, and plenty of them; he has land, plenty of that, too. But he’s dirty, Mother, she had said. A little dirt, what’s that? Diana had retorted. He’ll die years before you do, and you can enjoy a pleasant widowhood. You won’t mind his dirt then.

“We’ve met.”

“Of course you have, of course. I am so amazed to see you that I have lost my wits. Tell me everything. Sit down. London has gone mad. We might all be better off in Virginia. Did you bring tobacco with you?”

“Yes, barrels of it. They are sitting on a London quay.”

“This is a summer for surprises, is all I can say. I had no idea you were coming home. London will go mad all over again, over you. Of course, your grandmother wrote not a word of this to me.”

“She doesn’t know I’m here yet.”

“Tell me, did you ever find that little page of yours? We grieved about it, for you.”

“No.” She spoke softly. The hurt was still alive, deep.

“His disappearance was all the gossip here for a while, you know. Well, how could you know, leaving us to go halfway across the world the way you did? There was a costume fête given not long after word about him came. I must say that Lumpy and I—”

Lumpy? Who was Lumpy? It took Barbara a moment to realize that her aunt referred to Pendarves.

A bubble of laughter was suddenly in her, delicious, like summer wine. They’re lovers, she thought. How amusing, how funny! Charles is a father, Tony is married, and Aunt Shrew has chosen as a lover the man my mother once thought of as a husband for me.

Oh, Colonel Perry, I have so much to tell you already.

“We were the hit of the fête. I came as you, Bab. I wore a wig the color of that glorious hair of yours, and Lumpy came as Hyacinthe. We were all everyone talked of all evening. Lumpy, see if that broadsheet is somewhere about. There’ve been a number of them about you, Barbara, you might as well know, but this is the one that came out after we heard about Hyacinthe. Look on my dressing table, Lumpy. ‘Let her stay here to face her demons,’ I said to your grandmother, who was never one to listen to anyone, your grandfather included. And I think you are little different from her, Barbara, when all is said and done. Coming home, like this, without a word of warning to anyone. Well, you took us all by surprise in your leaving, and I suppose we should expect you would do the same with your return. Did you find it, Lumpy? Good. Look here, Barbara.”

The broadsheet was a rough drawing of a woman who looked like Barbara herself. She was in a forest weeping, while a plump minister looked the other way, a rope labeled “South Sea” around his neck and pulling him away. “Woe is me, the South Sea hath taken all from me.”

So it did, thought Barbara. Did you do all you could for Roger, Robin? For his memory? For me? If you did not, I will make you pay. How odd it felt to see herself used so.

“Is that supposed to be Walpole?”

“Yes. Have you seen the King’s legions in Hyde Park yet? Walpole and his brother-in-law, Lord Townshend, are screeching ‘Jacobite plot, Jacobite plot!’ over and over, like two parrots.”

“The plot is real,” said Pendarves. “I am privileged to be helping with the discovery of it. I may not say anything, but I will tell you, it is real.”

“It was quite a day,” said Aunt Shrew, “the day the soldiers marched in and set up camp. Quite a spectacle. Lord Townshend sending a proclamation that was read at the city gates. Soldiers have been stealing from my kitchen garden, I’m sure of it. Not a fresh lettuce leaf or green pear is to be had. I told Robert Walpole that it was a pity we citizens had no protection from our own troops. I told him the Pretender’s troops might be a welcome change from the thieves and beggars he calls soldiers.”

“That tongue of hers is going to see her arrested,” said Pendarves. “It is only a matter of time.”

Aunt Shrew leaned over and patted Pendarves’s hand. “It is why I keep on with you. So that you will warn me in time for escape. You will, won’t you?”